This workshop is designed for parents who would like to improve the quality of their relationship with their children. Dr. Tobin provides a roadmap for parents based on a core paradox of the human condition, i.e., the initial need to bond (to form and sustain early life) and the subsequent need to separate/individuate (in order for the child to secure a distinct personal identity unencumbered by unresolved issues with the family of origin). According to Dr. Tobin, both the parent and the developing child simultaneously press for separation/individuation and resist it. This workshop attempts to alert parents to the underlying dynamics that prolong this ambivalence and provides pragmatic suggestions for how parents can be "of use" psychologically so that their child is more successfully primed for the achievement of autonomy.
The Child’s Psychological Use of the Parent: A Workshop
1. The Child’s Psychological Use
of the Parent: A Workshop
James Tobin, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist, PSY 22074
220 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949-338-4388
www.jamestobinphd.com
2. Outline for Today’s Workshop
• Part I: Transcript of Samantha and Her Parents
• Part II: Parenting in a “Perfect Storm”
• Part III: The Universal Dilemma of Human
Development
Lunch Break
• Part IV: Optimal Parental Functions
• Part V: Introduction to the Coding Manual
2
5. Brain development continues into the
mid-30s
During adolescence, the child’s brain is unevenly
developed and is not necessarily capable of
the tasks parents believe should be occurring
(planning, cause-effect analysis, learning,
regret).
5
6. Brain development continues into the
mid-30s
Parents’ “construction” of their child often does
not take into account gaps in the child’s brain
development (leading to “attribution error”).
6
7. The rise of inadequately-assessed
risk-taking behavior
7
8. Daniel Romer’s compelling article:
“Adolescent Risk Taking, Impulsivity, and Brain
Development: Implications for Prevention,”
2010, Developmental Psychobiology, 52, 263-
276.
8
9. Risk-taking
... researchers from different disciplines have proposed
two-processes of brain maturation that predispose the
adolescent to risk taking and impulsivity. One process
that emerges early in adolescence is driven by
frontostriatal reward circuits involving the ventral
striatum (e.g., the nucleus accumbens) (Casey, Getz, &
Galvay, 2008; Chambers, Taylor, & Potenza, 2003;Galvan,
Hare, Parra, Penn, Voss, Glover, et al., 2006). These
circuits mature relatively early (Fuster, 2002) and
encourage the adolescent to venture away from the
family and toward increasingly novel and adult-like
activities (Spear, 2007). Not surprisingly, many of these
activities are fraught with a certain amount of risk (e.g.,
driving, sex).
9
10. Risk-taking
At the same time that the adolescent is engaging in
novel and risky activities, it is argued that the PFC has
not yet matured to the point where risks can be
adequately assessed and control over risk taking can be
sufficiently exerted to avoid unhealthy outcomes. In
particular, the PFC and its connections with other brain
regions are thought to be structurally inadequate to
provide the control that is optimal for adolescent
behavior. This maturational gap in development of PFC-
based control relative to more advanced motivational
circuitry is said to result in an inevitable period of risk for
adolescents (Casey et al., 2008; Nelson, Bloom, Cameron,
Amaral, Dahl, & Pine, 2002; Steinberg, 2008).
Furthermore, it is suggested that interventions to reduce
this period of vulnerability will inevitably have very
limited effectiveness (see Steinberg, this issue). 10
13. The CNN Special Report
“Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens”
13
14. Being13: Inside the Secret World of
Teens
• Approximately 200 eighth graders at eight different
schools in six states across the country allowed their
social media feeds to be studied by child development
experts who partnered with CNN.
• This is the first large scale study to analyze what kids
actually say to each other on social media and why it
matters so deeply to them.
• 150,000 social media posts were collected over a six-
month period.
14
15. • The main finding:
Teens are generally very anxious and hyper-
aware of what's occurring online; this is
largely due to a need to monitor their own
popularity status, and to defend themselves
against those who challenge it.
15
Being13: Inside the Secret World of
Teens
16. Being13: Inside the Secret World of
Teens
• 61% of teens said they wanted to see if their
online posts are getting likes and comments.
• 36% of teens said they wanted to see if their
friends are doing things without them.
• 21% of teens said they wanted to make sure
no one was saying mean things about them.
16
17. "This is an age group that has a lot of anxiety
about how they fit in, what they rank, what
their peer-status is. There is fear in putting
yourself out there on social media and they
hope for lots of likes and comments and
affirmations but there is always the chance
that someone could say something mean,” a
researcher stated.
17
Being13: Inside the Secret World of
Teens
19. Fred Kaeser: “The Super-Sexualization of
Children: Time to Take Notice” (Psychology
Today Blog Post, September 23, 2011)
19
20. Fred Kaeser
If you think about it the average child in the
United States today has countless
opportunities for exposure to sexualized
messages every day. Television, music,
billboards, print media, Internet, cellphones
and communication devices, cable, movies,
and of course interaction with peers and
adults, offer children numerous possibilities
where they can encounter sexual messages of
all sorts.
20
21. Fred Kaeser
In some homes kids are only a click away from
seeing sexual intercourse in all its possible
permutations, everything from your run-of-
the-mill sexual intercourse to some pretty
weird and disturbing sexual acts. Others still
are being exposed to actual sexual behavior in
their daily lives that gets played out by the
adults and older siblings around them.
21
22. Fred Kaeser
Irrespective of a child's particular situation,
you can bet that children are being exposed to
numerous sexual messages every day of their
lives. In fact, by the time a child reaches
puberty, she or he has likely been exposed to
thousands if not tens of thousands of
sexualized messages. Think about that for a
moment--constant exposure to sexualized
messages, day in and day out, at lightning
speed from nearly every direction, for their
entire childhood.
22
23. Fred Kaeser
We are creating a generation of super-sexualized
children. A significant number of children are
actually demonstrating sexual interest and/or
sexual behavior at earlier ages than ever before in
our society. Kids are being exposed to sexual
matters that were previously only in the purview of
adults and the greater the exposure the greater
the consequences can be. When parents fail to
counter and buffer the plethora of sexual stimuli
that confront children, they are left to their own
devices to manage what they experience.
23
24. Fred Kaeser
Unfortunately, many will be confused and
have difficulty making sense of and putting
into proper perspective what they are exposed
to. Some will actually try to act out or mimic
what they have been exposed to. Others, who
may be developing a bullying persona, will
begin to incorporate sexual behavior into their
bullying behavior and engage in hurtful or
intrusive sexual behavior towards other
children.
24
25. Fred Kaeser
Frankly, I am alarmed over the number of five, six,
seven, and eight year old children that molest
other children (I have NEVER received so many
phone calls from school staff about this problem
as I have the past ten to fifteen years). The
biggest impact however that the super-
sexualization of children can have is its overall
looming effect on the day-to-day existence of
kids. Sexuality becomes much more of a player
than it should, irrespective of the child's age.
25
26. "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualization of
Childhood and What Parents Can Do to
Protect Their Kids“ by Diane E. Levin and Jean
Kilbourne
26
27. The rise of pornography viewing by
teenagers
• Pornography viewing by teens disorients their
views of romance and sexuality.
• A significant relationship exists among teens
between frequent pornography use and
feelings of loneliness, and between
pornography use and major depression.
27
28. The Millennial Generation
Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are
the demographic cohort following Generation
X.
Most researchers and commentators use birth
years ranging from the early 1980s to the
early 2000s to designate Generation Y.
28
29. The Peter Pan Generation
American sociologist Kathleen
Shaputis labeled Millennials
as the Boomerang Generation or Peter Pan
Generation: rites of passage into adulthood are
delayed for longer periods than most
generations before them.
There is a prominent trend among the Millennials
of living with their parents for longer periods
than previous generations.
29
30. Research indicates that on a variety of
psychological, emotional and cognitive
variables, children today are less mature than
children of the same age in previous
generations.
30
31. The developmental timeline of human life is
changing .... with a delayed/prolonged
transition into adulthood
• Before: childhood, adolescence (13 to 19), young
adulthood (20 to 25), adulthood (25 to 64),
retirement/elderly (64+)
• Now: childhood, biological adolescence (13 to 17),
psychological adolescence (18 to 22), emerging
adulthood (23 to 33), young adulthood (34 to
39/40), adulthood (41 to 70), retirement/elderly
(70+)
31
32. In certain cultures, rituals demarcate the
child’s entrance into adulthood (the
transition is unequivocal and final)
32
36. Are we creating a society of adult-
children?
According to Kimberly Palmer, "High housing
prices, the rising cost of higher education, and
the relative affluence of the older generation
are among the factors driving the trend.”
A 2013 joint study by sociologists at the University
of Virginia and Harvard University found that
the likelihood of marriage is actually
diminishing among certain subgroups of
children.
36
37. Resistance toward becoming an adult
or something else?
Larry Nelson, a researcher in a 2012 study at
Brigham Young University study, noted that "In
prior generations, you get married and you
start a career and you do that immediately.
What young people today are seeing is that
this approach has led to divorces, to people
unhappy with their careers … The majority
want to get married […] they just want to do it
right the first time, the same thing with their
careers."
37
41. The work of Daniel J. Siegel
• The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal
Experience (New York: Guilford Press, 1999)
• Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain (New York:
WW Norton & Company, 2003). Co-edited with Marion Solomon.
• Forward to Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to
Psychotherapy by Kekuni Minton, Pat Ogden, and Clare Pain (New
York: WW Norton & Company, 2006)
• The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of
Well-Being (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2007)
• The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience,
Development & Clinical Practice (New York: WW Norton &
Company, 2009). Co-edited with Diana Fosha and Marion F.
Solomon.
41
42. The work of Daniel J. Siegel
• The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight
and Neural Integration (New York: WW Norton &
Company, 2010)
• Mindsight: The New Science of Personal
Transformation (New York: Bantam, 2010)
• The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to
Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, Survive Everyday
Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive (New
York: Delacorte Press, 2011). Co-author with Tina
Payne Bryson.
• The Developing Mind, Second Edition: How
Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We
Are (New York: Guilford Press, 2012).
42
43. The work of Daniel J. Siegel
• Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An
Integrative Handbook of the Mind (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2012)
• Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage
Brain (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2013)
• Parenting From the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-
Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who
Thrive (New York: Tarcher, 2004). Co-author with Mary
Hartzel.
• No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm
the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing
Mind (New York: Bantam, 2014). Co-author with Tina
Payne Bryson.
43
49. With heightened pruning (by a lack of quality
relational experience), identity development
and internal motivation will be stalled ... this is
the silent epidemic of child “self-estrangement”
49
50. Self-estrangement
Exaggerated claims of identity and/or a total
withdrawal from identity (I am an empty shell
of a person; I feel nothing; I want nothing) –
this leads to the habitual need to find an
external way to be stimulated/to feel anything
50
52. Given all of these factors, parents
need a life preserver
52
53. Parenting without a theory of
parenting
There is no roadmap
for how to parent.
Parents often parent the way they were parented or
seek to parent in ways that are opposite of how
they were parented.
Today you will learn a theory of parenting that
focuses on the parent’s need to support the
child’s brain development through quality
relational experience.
53
54. Part III: The Universal Dilemma of
Human Development
54
60. 4 stages of union/separation
• Symbiosis (child aged 0 to 6 months)
• Separation (6 months to 2 years)
• Differentiation (2 years to 6 years)
• Individuation (6+ years)
Every parent-child pair experiences some degree of
difficulty at one or multiple points along this 4-
stage process ... the term “personality” refers to
the psychological defenses a child uses to get
through the challenges of these stages
60
62. Symbiosis (“two becoming one”)
• Mother exists for the child
• If all goes well, primary narcissism is laid
down at the foundation of the child’s identity
• The child’s strategy of attachment becomes
habitual
62
63. It is during Symbiosis that the child’s
psychological separation from the
parent actually begins (i.e., the child
accommodates to the primary
caretaker – this is the first major
defense)
63
64. In the 6th or 7th month of life,
separation is physically manifested
64
65. “Going on Being”: the child’s innate
drives of exploration and discovery
65
66. The child’s “going on being” is
inevitably interrupted (the second
major defense)
66
67. By age 6, the child’s psychological defenses
(to accommodate and cope with “going on
being” interruptions) split the child’s identity
into 3 components
67
68. The False Self ..... the compromised,
accommodating part of the
personality
68
69. The True Self ....the non-compromised
authentic part of the personality
69
70. The Unknown Self .... the part of the
true self that was not given an
opportunity to develop (“to be”) and
expand.
70
71. What does this all mean for
the parent and
adolescent? ....
2 main take-aways
71
72. (#1) The adolescent is disproportionately part-
true, part-false, and part-unknown.
If separation and individuation are promoted
in the family appropriately (not too
slowly/not too quickly), the teen will be more
“true,” less “false,” and more highly invested
in exploring his/her “unknown.”
72
73. (#2) At any moment in the parent-child
relationship, the parent never knows at what
level of union/separation the child is at nor vice
versa ...
• Symbiosis (child aged 0 to 6 months)
• Separation (6 months to 2 years)
• Differentiation (2 years to 6 years)
• Individuation (6+ years)
** THIS IS THE ISSUE OF MISATTUNEMENT**
73
74. Most romantic relationship difficulties in
adulthood are nothing more than an attempt
to relive unresolved relational conflicts with
one’s parents (MISATTUNEMENTS), at
whatever level of union/separation they
occurred, with one’s partner, and finally, to no
longer accommodate!
74
76. All adult romantic relationships are
pre-determined
You don’t marry your mother or father; rather,
you recruit a person to unwittingly become an
actor in the play you direct in which:
(1) your partner is cast as your parent
who constricts you and misattunes to you,
and ...
(2) you are your former child self who can
finally subvert the parent in order to “be.”
76
80. There is great ambivalence about the
child’s identity development and
imminent separation and autonomy
This is universally resisted, consciously and/or
unconsciously, by both parent and child, in all
families!
I
80
81. Parents often do not realize the
intensity of their child’s ambivalence
about growing up
81
82. At any moment ...
• Symbiosis (child aged 0 to 6 months)
• Separation (6 months to 2 years)
• Differentiation (2 years to 6 years)
• Individuation (6+ years)
82
83. Example of the child’s resistance to
“becoming a two”
83
84. Example of the parent’s resistance to
“becoming a two”
84
85. As childhood transitions into adolescence,
self-recognition intensifies
• Who I am or might be = separation/aloneness
85
86. The false, true, and unknown selves
collide, overlap and conflict
86
87. Self-recognition
“If I look at myself and my feelings closely,
and begin to recognize who I am, I will
realize I am ... different, strange, unique,
unlikable, fat, ugly, weird, etc. etc. ......
AND .... I will be alone (others won’t like
me/I won’t like me) ... AND ... I will die.”
87
88. At the same time, every parent has
difficulty tolerating who his/her child
is becoming
88
89. The one way out of all these
problems?
All of these tensions put the teen and the parent in a
state of internal difficulty/crisis that cannot be
tolerated.
There is an old adage: “All the important arguments
are with yourself.”
Humans usually do not abide by this: instead, they
create drama with others to distract from their
own internal dramas.*******
89
90. In which scene are the child’s emotional
capacities being developed?
A B
90
91. Scene A ... this is a TRANSACTION and it
capitalizes on the close ties (union) between
parent and child to delay the child’s brain
development (PFC) and emotional autonomy
91
92. Scene B ... this is WITNESSING and it
promotes the child’s interiority
92
93. Interiority
An interior space in your child’s mind, an
organized structure for thinking, feeling, and
relating to self and others. This space is
created solely through well-boundaried
interpersonal relatedness.
93
94. The child’s brain development (and
psychological and emotional
maturity) depend on quality
relational experience
94
95. Scaffolding
Your parental function is to scaffold your child’s
current union/separation stage so that it
moves slightly toward the next level and does
not regress back to previous levels.
95
111. Summary
• These 10 unconscious transactional patterns
in families capitalize on the primal bond
between parent and child (the long history of
“two becoming one”) to resist what needs to
occur (“one becoming two”).
• These unconscious transactions are
interpersonal boundary violations.
111
112. There is a large catalogue of unconscious
transactions in families (that violate
interpersonal boundaries and resist “one
becoming two”)
These transactions are reinforced by
misattunements
Identifying the characteristic transactions
and misattunements of your specific family
dynamics should be a major focus of
family therapy and parent guidance work
112
113. Interpersonal boundary violations
Interpersonal boundary violations between
parent and child leave the child with poor
internal boundaries: “I can’t say ‘No!’ to
myself .... my thoughts, desires, cravings,
tendencies, impulses, etc.”
113
114. “The addictive sentiment”
This is the “addictive sentiment,” setting the stage
for all future dependencies including substance
and process addictions as well as
emotional/romantic co-dependence and love
addiction.
Relational boundary diffusion and internal
boundary diffusion usually co-exist, feeding off of
each other and making it almost impossible to be
a boundaried person – with self or with others!
This translates into a proneness for transactions
not witnessing.
114
115. For the parent, witnessing, not
transacting, promotes the child’s capacity
to be alone and his/her growth and
autonomy
115
116. “The capacity to be alone”
“I wish to make an examination of the capacity
of the individual to be alone, acting on the
assumption that this capacity is one of the
most important signs of maturing in
emotional development ... It would seem to
me that a discussion of the positive aspects
of the capacity to be alone is overdue” (D.W.
Winnicott, 1958).
116
118. Witnessing as Relational Dialysis
You accept and absorb your child’s “toxic” states
and refine them by having these states:
(1) go “into” you (listen, inquire, contain), and
(2) return them back to your child in a more
palatable/purified form (your child’s
experience is not judged nor devalued, but
emphatically validated and contextualized).
118
120. Transacting vs. Witnessing
In transacting, material from
the child binds to the parent
(causing an interpersonal struggle)
In witnessing/relational dialysis,
material from the child passes
through the parent and returns
to the child in an altered form
for further examination
(causing an intrapersonal struggle) 120
121. Relational dialysis is not only a
communication strategy, but an attitudinal
presence that implies a meta-message to the
child:
(1) “I am separate from you”
(2) “You are struggling due to your natural,
‘normal’ and understandable resistances to
maturity, independence/autonomy, and
aloneness”
(3) “If I transact with you, I will hurt you by
inhibiting your emotional development ... so I
will witness instead” 121
122. The punch line
As a parent, you want to avoid transactions
with your child and attempt to correct
misattunements ...
.... so that you can relate to your child as a
separate being in the role of witness
122
124. Are you under- or over-invested in
your child’s emerging identity?
124
125. Are you identified with or counter-
identified with your own parents in
how you parent?
125
126. Are you overly-identified with your
child?
• Are you activated more by what you see in your
child that reminds you of you? ... These regions
of similarity tend to be responsible for most of a
parent’s parenting activity
• Are you activated more by what you see in your
child that is foreign to you/does not remind you
of you? ... These regions of dissimilarity are
what parents usually need to devote more of
their attention to
126
127. Are you a person (not a parent) who
can be idealized by your child?
127
128. “Triumphs of Experience” by George
Valliant (Amazon)
• In 1938, Harvard University began following
268 male undergraduate students and kicked
off the longest-running longitudinal study of
human development in history.
• The study’s goal was to determine as best as
possible what factors contribute most strongly
to human flourishing.
128
129. “Triumph of Experience”
• Vaillant raises a number of factors more often
than others, but the one he refers to most
often is the powerful correlation between the
warmth of a man’s relationships and his
health and happiness in later years.
129
130. Are you a “charismatic” parent?
• Dr. Robert Brooks:
www.drrobertbrooks.com
• Dr. Julius Segal’s finding
of “one charismatic adult”
in the lives of resilient people
(see Winning Life's Toughest Battles: Roots of
Human Resilience, 1986)
• Charismatic adult: “a person from whom a child or
adolescent gathers strength”
130
133. The impact of former husbands/wives
and divergent parenting practices
133
134. The rise of internet pornography
• Every second 372
people are typing
the word "adult" into search engines
• 40 million American people regularly visit porn
sites
• 35% of all internet downloads are related to
pornography
• 25% of all search engine queries are related to
pornography, or about 68 million search queries a
day 134
137. Teen: “You’re a fucking whore and a bitch! Go ahead, say
something now.”
Parent: “You must be trying to tell me something.”
Teen: “Yeah, that you’re a bitch and you always have been.
Why do you think I am so depressed – it’s because
you’re a fuck up.”
Parent: “I know I’ve made mistakes and they have hurt you,
but I really love you even though you see me as a fuck-
up.”
Teen: “That’s not love!”
Parent: “What isn’t love?”
Teen: “What you did to Daddy.”
Parent: “Tell me what you think I did.”
145. James Tobin, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist PSY 22074
220 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949-338-4388
Email: jt@jamestobinphd.com
Web: www.jamestobinphd.com